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Exactly.
Where did this come from with no preparation or warning for the user? No instructions for solving the puzzle. A challenge, indeed, but I had no idea that that was what we signed up for when we tried "too many times" to get into an account that is critical to internet use if you have an MS system. "Too many times" in whose opinion? Certainly not for people like me who are dyslexic and have low vision and problems remembering numbers and with typing on a keyboard that serves as a barrier for people with left/right and center line issues which is a significant part of the population. Left and right is the same to us and the QUERTY keyboard is painful and frustrating where there is a 50% chance we will hit the wrong key. I spend twice as much time correcting as I do typing, squinting to find the mistakes and many cases what we have typed is hidden from view. How is one supposed to go from there other than to keep on trying and trying and trying. In that situation, how many attempts is too many? Yes, it is a challenge but what for some is a breeze is nearly impossible for others like me. Brains are wired differently and that needs to be taken into account. It's the difference between inventors and engineers. Inventors have imaginations and can think of what problems might arise while engineers usually just follow the cookbook instructions insisting that they are following the instructions and it should work. Ha! Many of the problems I am now with using the internet are because there are too few people with imaginations producing the product foisted upon us like this so-called 'challenge question'. It was totally counter-intuitive and I spent many hours looking not having any idea what is meant. It was not a question. It was a phrase that had mo logical meaning. Even with the solution staring me in the face, I could not make a connection to "challenge question" Instead, the instructions should have said something like type in the letters and numbers you see here. Just like the challenges that we use to show we are humans and not robots. The real challenge is to platform designers to challenge and defend us from scammers and others getting into our accounts when they have no business or legitimate purpose for invading our privacy. There are ways, but it takes people with imagination to come up with solutions and those are the people who are shut out of their accounts for 'trying too many times' or 'making too many attempts' to get into our own accounts. I have spent countless hours on the phone with customer service agents trying to get into not only this accounts but nearly all of them. I get some who understand and more often those who do not get it that I am unable to get into MY OWN ACCOUNTS because of the lack of vision on the part of the designers of these torture devices. That is what they have become to me and people like me.
Also. codes sent for 2-step variation and such, using words from the dictionary would ease the pain and frustration for many of us who can remember a word like "buffalo" and get it typed in so much easier than random numbers in a long stream that mean nothing. Replace the 10 characters of numbers with the 26 of our alphabet. So much better for all us word v number folks.